The Ecospot – Eco Brighton Interior and Landscape Design

It has to be said that we are quite partial to a great coffee or tasty chai latte and recently we have been meeting with lots of clients at coffee shops around Brighton to discuss projects as our own studio is in the process of construction. What is nice about this is that we discover new places ourselves in the city and when we visited Cafe Coho last week in Ship Street, the great coffee and lovely industrial interior design boxes were well and truly ticked.

 

All the ingredients of an industrial interior were there – bare brick walls, scaffold board shelves, enamel shades, handwritten signs, blackboards, reclaimed chapel chairs, stone floor. But what we really liked was the distinct personality that the space had.

There were some nice little touches, like a ‘specials’ menu board which was made from a roll of brown paper which hung from a chain on the wall. Daily specials could be added to  the sheet, then recycled at the end of the day. Some may say that this was wasteful, but really, this helped to differentiate the specials from the rest of the regular menu – plus the brown paper is easily recycled.

Another feature which we feel really makes the character of any cafe is the way cakes, biscuits and other delectables are displayed. This can be organised, just like a French patisserie, with everything in neat rows, it could be traditional, with elements arranged in piles on glass cake stands, or even vintage, with old china used.

The tasties at Cafe Coho were arranged with a keen eye and a nod to the rest of the industrial interior – artfully arranged on timber boards and slates with small, handwritten blackboard style signs. Using tins as raised tiers, if you did not feel hungry when you went in, the almost eye level cakes meant that you soon were.

We enjoyed a very nice meeting here and will definitely be visiting again. A lovely cafe and a great example of a nice and simple industrial interior design.

(images by claire potter)